<p>I'd love to hear your experience with this. D wants to live off campus next year and mucho pressure to get a place now before they are all snapped up.</p>
<p>DD moved off campus this past year, her sophomore year. Plusses: She has her own room with quiet space. She gets much better sleep and study time, is able to control more how clean her living area is, and is able to cook food more suitable for her diet. There are 3 of them and they get along relatively well even with 2 of 3 voice majors. They knew each other before rooming and knew each others quirks. They are all relatively the same re parties, late nights, need for quiet. They seem to respect each other’s boundaries well re food, supplies. All important considerations. </p>
<p>Minuses. When it gets really hectic she has to leave campus to go back to her room instead of popping in which makes it more of an effort or she can’t go. Sometimes she hasn’t gotten to the store and food choices are dry cereal, although she can get food on campus and we have left money on her card for that. She is the only one without a car so is constantly having to depend on others for rides to the store or if the weather is bad to campus. We thought the bike would be enough and it really hasn’t been. Next year she gets a car. It’s a little more effort to be involved with activities on campus. If the weather is iffy it is easier to stay in the apartment than to go. </p>
<p>All said, she is staying where she is next year. She likes it a lot better than campus, but almost all of her friends that moved off are going back on campus next year. At Rice you pretty much can live on campus 3 of 4 years and many do.</p>
<p>I see the benefits as financial and life skills.</p>
<p>Financially, the apartment costs less than the dorm, and we get to pay that in monthly rather than semester increments.</p>
<p>Life skills: We gave our kids a monthly allowance equal to rent and meal plan; they had to learn how to manage the recurring expenses of rent, food, utilities, toiletries.</p>
<p>Drawbacks:
As mentioned before, involvement with campus activities might be impacted. It is easier to attend an event if one of your 20-someodd hallmates knocks on your door.
It didn’t impact my kids too much since most kids moved off campus by junior year at their schools.
Where I went to college, you either lived on campus or commuted from the family home. My peers and I stayed in dorms all 4 years.</p>
<p>My son is moving off campus next year. For him it won’t put him further away and he’d already dropped the mealplan. His dorm is also converted from apartments - he’s in a 1BR with a roommate. He’ll be living with more kids, but with his own bedroom at less cost. Same distance from campus. I don’t know how much he’ll miss out on socializing with kids on his floor, some I imagine. OTOH the house he’ll be in has been rented out to a group of Linux kids for quite a while so he’ll be part of his group.</p>
<p>Do make sure that you have renter’s insurance and that it’s clear what happens if a housemate leaves before the end of the lease.</p>
<p>It’s much easier to have a job in town, or to take summer courses, if you’re not being thrown out of the dorm for every break and vacation.</p>
<p>Our son’s off-campus apartment is a 15-second walk to the building which houses his department and is closer than the dorms to the campus. The rest of the building is students too (graduate, athletes and seniors). So it does depend where the apartment is. I also just noticed that there are a lot of houses that came on the market recently in the area - mainly small single-family homes. I looked around a few years ago when our son started college full-time but there was nothing for sale.</p>
<p>The one thing that he likes about his apartment is quiet and privacy and not having to worry about alcohol, smoking and drugs.</p>
<p>At the UCs in my moniker almost everyone is required to move off campus after the 2nd or 3rd year. It seems most of them are ready to move off campus by then since they’re usually tired of the required dorm food regardless of how good it is, want a little more room, and want more independence.</p>
<p>My D moved off campus to the area where most students move and that’s served by the free campus shuttle. She lived in a nice apartment that she shared with another girl. The apartment was much more spacious than the dorm, less expensive since a meal plan she used little of wasn’t required, she had a kitchen so she could cook her own healthier food (she’s a veg), and she was somewhat more independent living there.</p>
<p>The only down side was that it wasn’t in the middle of campus like the dorm so she had a little further to go to classes but it wasn’t that big of a deal since it was maybe 2 miles from campus and she just took the shuttle every day. After a couple of years in the dorms the ‘need to live on-campus to meet friends’ point is diminished and they can still participate in any on campus activities.</p>
<p>It seems that the desirability of living on/off campus would depend a lot of the particular campus - whether they’re permitted to live on-campus the whole time, how decent the on-campus facilities are (like if they can have a single and if they can cook), how convenient/inconvenient off-campus apartments are, and what the cost differential is. Of course, it also depends on the students themselves.</p>
<p>It really depends on the school and how good the off-campus options are. Rice has lots of great options and many of them are right at the edge of campus. My kids were both completely “dormed out” and couldn’t wait to get off campus. One went off after soph year, one after freshman year. D saved a ton on food because she was really good about fixing her own food and always having groceries. S not so much, but he did love having the refrigerator (probably for beer and leftover Chinese food). Both of my kids prefer to live alone and that works best for them. Others like having roommates.</p>
<p>I’d second the points made by Mominva. For D1 the primary benefits were financial and life skills. Room and board was less expensive than on campus. D1 drew the short straw and was the one in charge of collecting rent/utility/wireless/cable monies from everyone (4 other girls) and then paying the bills. The girls probably could have done this differently, but it was the format they agree upon when they decided to move in together. Until then, D1 had never paid bills. She also learned to budget–we gave her rent money and food money (equivalent to a mid-level food plan on campus); she earned her own spending money from coaching gymnastics off-campus. In terms of interpersonal relations–she gained some valuable experience. One roommate decided to reduce her monthly payments because she felt her internet and utility usage was much less than the other girls; this roommate argued that she spent more time elsewhere (boyfriend’s apartment) and should pay a smaller share. That was an interesting dilemma for D1 and other roommates to resolve. They worked it out–four years later, they’re still friends. All of them are in D1’s wedding this spring.</p>
<p>Financial–lower housing cost than dorms and provides a place for his stuff all year long. College is in a great skiing area and this allows him a place to sleep during breaks from which he can go skiing during the day. Lower food cost because the meal plan was dropped.</p>
<p>Academics–S prefers a single and the greater control over noise, hours etc. </p>
<p>Entertaining.– S has developed a group who do a lot together. Livingroom and kitchen/den provides an opportunity for more space to get together.</p>
<p>Life skills–negotiating lease, getting utilites started in his name, getting renter’s insurance. Getting a taste of this now rather than when he is balancing a new town and a new job.</p>
<p>Ditto 07DAD, our S is the same right down to the skiing. It’s been very good for him (his grades went up) to live off campus (and the lower cost overall is good for us.)</p>
<p>momofthreeboys–CU-Boulder, CC or UD?</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. </p>
<p>Do most of you rent the apartments year round? Try to sublet in the summer? Or just take the 3 month hit when they aren’t there? </p>
<p>Have you found that most leases run June-June or September-September?</p>
<p>My daughter moved off campus her Sophomore year and loves it. She did find an apartment close enough to campus to walk to her classes (actually it is closer to her classes than her dorm was). That was a major priority for her and her room mate. They did not even look at apartments that were not within walking distance which limited the availability somewhat. Luckily they found an apartment they love and have re-signed for next year already. She has friends who live further afield and possibly have snazzier facilities such as pools at one place or a laundromat at another but, for her, the being close by was more important.</p>
<p>Pros - cheaper for sure. More space - she is paying less for an apartment with a nice size bedroom (they each have their own room) and a living room than she did for her cramped dorm room. Quieter - sometimes she found the dorms very noisy, especially with video games in the commons till the early hours. She gets to have a cat (really makes her happy). Prepares her own food. She and her room mate are friendly but not best friends. I was worried about how it would work out but it seems to work out perfectly as they do not depend on each other for their social lives (in fact their social lives are completely separate) but enjoy each others company when they are there. Has learned the above mentioned life lessons - paying rent on time, paying bills, budgeting. etc. They balanced bills by having the electric in one name and the TV/internet in the other and when one bill is higher they just hand over the difference to eachother. has worked well.</p>
<p>The only drawbacks I would see are possibly social. Hers is a large school and you really don’t make friends through the classes. The friends she does have are those she met in the dorms last year. </p>
<p>She is much happier in her own space.</p>
<p>S’s lease is 12 month. No summer sublet because S works in the area and attends summer college session.</p>
<p>One of the financial “breaks” is that there is no extra summer storeage rental expense. If a parent tends to travel to the student’s college to assist in the May dorm move out each year, having a 12 month apartment saves on that trip and attendant expense.</p>
<p>BTW–several of us have indicated that the total 12 month lease is LESS than 2 semesters’ board costs at the college.</p>
<p>ANOTHER possible financial saving is campus parking. S’s apartment is in a residential area less than 200 yards from the campus AND the apartment includes off-street parking! S said he can have extra ski days with the money he saves on not paying for a campus parking pass.</p>
<p>All negative, unless you’re forced to make concessions for the sake of your budget. College can be life-altering, transformational, identity-forming. Or, it can be showing up 15 hours a week for class plus occasional pre-planned events. It can be like the buffet on a cruise, or it can be like fast-food drive-thru. The whole difference is the degree of engagement and involvement on the part of the student - psychological involvement as well as physical involvement. As Woody Allen said, 80% of success is just showing up. Students who move off campus are giving back that 80%.</p>
<p>Some of the best parts of college, just like the best parts of the rest of our lives, are unplanned. They happened because you’re with the right people in the right place. Suppose you’d needed more room in your house when your student was growing up, and you’d decided to rent a place across town for your child, only getting together for meals and pre-planned meetings. Would your student and your family have been the same? College works the same way.</p>
<p>There has been a boom in the past few years in student apartments built by developers. They build in lots of amenities and build cheaply, then discount the rates the first year to get high occupancy while they look to sell the new complex at a profit. The college’s goals with their housing include your student’s education, development, safety, and well-being. The apartment developers are out to make a profit. Period. If they’re not full, they’ll rent to anyone. Their contracts are lengthy and filled with options to charge your student extra before the end of the rental period. And once you sign, you’ll never get out of it.</p>
<p>We have two kids in college right now. Before they applied, we sat down with them and crafted a list of possible colleges, then struck from the list every school at which it didn’t appear likely or practical to live on campus for four years. When kid #3 makes his list a year from now, we’ll do the same thing.</p>
<p>Gadad, I see your point if your kid is at a place where it is unlikely anyone moves off campus. </p>
<p>But two of mine are done. They lived off campus their last 2 years, interacted with neighbors who were not classmates, participated in events on and off campus with their peers, and never had a problem with inflated charges from their private landlords. </p>
<p>I am glad we didn’t exclude their universities from our search. They were great learning places for our kids in and out of the classrooms.</p>
<p>Our son was on campus for two years and moved off for his third year. The apartment, which is very close to everything, is significantly more expensive than the dorm. Paying for an empty apartment in the summer really bothered me, even though it’s his cost since we are still paying as if he is in the dorm as a condition for letting him do this. He doesn’t have a car and hasn’t needed one. He still uses a meal plan for most of his meals (we pay him the equivalent of a full meal plan and he gets a lower priced one and uses the remainder to help subsidize his high rent but hates cooking or shopping–perfectly happy with cafeteria food). He has his own room rather than sharing, but never complained about his roommates or noise in the dorm bothering him so that doesn’t seem like a big plus. He will be living abroad fall of his senior year and will look to sublet something for spring of his senior year after he gets home, possibly in a dorm on campus.</p>
<p>Parking is a huge perk. The college police at my son’s school must make a small fortune for the school in parking tickets to students that park in the dorm parking lots without permits. There is no free on-street parking in the area at all.</p>
<p>In an environment where most upperclassmen live off-campus (as was/is the case at both of my kids’ colleges), there is no particular disadvantage, socially or in terms of participation in campus events, to moving off campus. You won’t meet as many people as you did in the dorms, but you aren’t a freshman anymore, so you don’t need to. And most students living off-campus live in neighborhoods where everyone is a student at their college. They are not cut off from the college in any way.</p>
<p>Living off-campus is NOT necessarily cheaper. The rent may be just as high, you may be stuck with a 12-month lease, and if you don’t have a car and the supermarket is not within walking distance, you may end up eating most of your meals on campus, spending just as much on food as you would if you lived on campus.</p>
<p>My son (at the University of Maryland) and my daughter (at Cornell) both found off-campus apartments not significantly farther from their classes than the dorms are. But in neither case is there easy access to a supermarket. Nevertheless, my son liked his off-campus living situation, and I expect my daughter, who is moving off-campus in the fall, will like it, too. After spending her sophomore year living in a closet-sized double with a stranger, living in a three-bedroom apartment with two friends will be very pleasant – even though they will have to clean their own bathroom. And I think the experience of having to take care of their own place and deal with the landlord and the utility companies is good practice for living in an apartment after graduation. Even the apartment search process was a good learning experience (although there are few places other than Ithaca where you have to sign a lease in November for an apartment that you will move into the following August).</p>
<p>Of course, gadad would have stricken both of those universities from his kids’ list – despite all they have to offer – because on-campus housing is not guaranteed all four years (and in the case of Cornell, very few people live on campus after sophomore year).</p>